Glenbuchat Heritage

111 Alexander Meston of Towie

Archibald Alexander Meston of Towie

Pictures above:

Archibald Alexander Meston
Map Kinbattock (red Square) Towie See below for people from the red circles.
Alex Meston’s notebook with Aboriginal Dictionary
Alex Meston throwing Boomerang
Alex Meston at an Aboriginal camp during
Archibald Meston with group of men and boys, Daintree River, ca. 1895.
Alex Meston’s grave in South Brisbane Cemetery


Archibald Meston was born at Towie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the son of Alexander Meston He migrated with his parents to Sydney in 1859, his family subsequently taking up farming at Ulmarra, New South Wales on the Clarence River. After a long and varied career in exploration and journalism, Meston retired to Brisbane where he died (a pauper) of tetanus on 11 March 1924.

He was born in Kinbattock Croft Towie, shown as a red square in the map above. He w as born at the same period and in close proximity to other Towie notable residents, Dr Proctor, Bridge End, Dr Profeit Nether Towie. and Sir William MacGregor Hillockhead

Meston Family tree:

Alexander Meston
Birth 1767 Towie, Aberdeenshire,
Death 10 Jun 1847 Scotland
Parents
Robert Meston 1723–
Margaret Thomson 1735–
Spouse
Jean Craigie 1768–1839
Children
Alexander Meston Esq 1803–1890


Alexander Meston Esq
Birth 5 May 1803 Towie, Aberdeenshire,
Death 11 Oct 1890 Maclean, NSW, Australia
Parents
Alexander Meston 1767–1847
Jean Craigie 1768–1839
Spouse
Margaret Clark 1816–1891
Children
William Meston 1834–
Elizabeth Meston 1836–
Alexander Meston 1836–1921
Seaton Meston 1838–
Isabella Meston 1841–
Archibald Alexander Meston 1851–1924


Archibald Alexander Meston
Birth 26 Mar 1851 Kinbattock Towie, Donside Aberdeen, Scotland
Death 11 Mar 1924 Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Parents
Alexander Meston Esq 1803–1890
Margaret Clark 1816–1891
Spouse
Margaret Frances Prouse Shaw 1853–1940
Children
Hannah Toressa Parisena Meston 1872–1955
Albert Harold Meston 1874–1938
Ada Helen "Nellie" Meston 1876–1918
Leon Alexander Meston 1878–1954
Oscar Ethelbert Meston 1881–1927
Eveline Olympia Meston 1886–1891
Emilius Archibald "Jack" Meston 1889–1964

Details of Meston’s live can be seen from his obituary in The Brisbane Courier of Wed 12 Mar 1924

MR. A. MESTON.
DEATH YESTERDAY.

A large circle of friends will learn with deep regret of the death of Mr. Archibald Meston. He had been ailing for the last week, and on Monday was taken to hospital, where he passed away peacefully yesterday afternoon. The late Mr. Meston, who was one of the most widely known men in Queensland, was born in Donside, Aberdeenshire, and was 73 years of age. He was a great-grandson of William Meston, the last Governor of Dunnottar Castle at the time of the battle of Sheriffmuir. He came out to Australia with his father and other members of the family, and went to Ulmarra, on the Clarence River.

Subsequently, Mr. Meston came to Queensland and was manager of Dr. Waugh's Pearlwell sugar plantation on the Brisbane River, when 21 years of age. In subsequent years his name came prominently before the public in regard to literature, exploration, ethnology, and athletics. At 24 years of age, he was editor of the Ipswich "Observer," and held that post after the paper had been brought to Brisbane and until it was taken over by a syndicate and a change made in the literary management in February, 1881. For a time, he was also editor of the "Toowoomba Chronicle” and the "Townsville Herald," and made many contributions to the Press, especially the "Queenslander," and, in more recent years, the "Courier." He wielded a facile pen, and his articles were invariably interesting and well written.

Only on Sunday last he endeavoured to prepare an article which was to have been published in the " Sydney Daily Telegraph.'' He had a retentive memory, which stood him in good stead. He was a strong supporter of the McIlwraith Ministry, and lent much interest to the debates when speaking as the member for Rosewood, for which constituency he was elected when 25 years of age. He selected land for sugar growing at Cairns, and for two years was chairman of the Cairns Divisional Board, but, after a few years, returned to Brisbane and resumed journalistic work. He was the author of several well-known publications, including the “Geographic History of Queensland,” published by the Government, and used in the State schools, and a railway guide book.

In 1889 Mr. Meston was the leader of the Queensland Government scientific expedition to the Bellenden Ker ranges, in 1891 he led an Italian scientific expedition, and in 1905 a second expedition for the Queensland Government. In 1896 he entered the Government service for the work of protecting the aboriginals, and in 1898 was appointed Protector of Aboriginals in the Southern Division, holding the post for nine years.

He was an authority on aboriginal laws, customs, languages, and weapons, and could effectively handle the last mentioned. At Commonwealth celebrations in Sydney, he effectively reproduced the landing of Captain Cook at Botany, with the assistance of 32 Queensland aboriginals.

.In athletics he was prominent in his younger days in swimming, diving, running, rowing, weight lifting, throwing the spear and boomerang, putting the stone, throwing the hammer, boxing, and rifle and revolver shooting. He retained his muscular development in later life, and up to within a few days of his death was remarkably active. For some time, he was in charge of the Queensland Government Tourist Bureau in Sydney, and in this capacity became well known to travelling Queenslanders.

The late Mr. Meston leaves his widow, four sons — Harold (Brisbane), Leon (Government Analyst's Department), Oscar (Warden, Stanhope), and “Jack" (Q.N. Bank, Townsville) — and one daughter — Mrs. H. G. Stokes (Adelaide).
The funeral will take place at the South Brisbane Cemetery at 4 o'clock today.


Archibald Meston was a great explorer and researcher into Aboriginal life and also a supporter of them. However, his research was less scientific and more of a reporter seeking interesting topics. His journalism was explored in:

Constructing Aboriginality: Archibald Meston’s Literary Journalism, 1870–1924 by Cheryl Taylor, James Cook University


‘The initial consideration of Archibald Meston’s half-century of literary journalism undertaken in this essay has thus revealed a mixture of exploitative and benevolent motives and an interweaving of racial discourses, many of which were standard for the period. Liberal elements, embodying attitudes uncommon before the late twentieth century, include Meston’s recognition of Aborigines’ rights to the land, his conviction that indigenous culture was truly ancient, his perception of the gulf between theoretical British compassion for the tribes and the pragmatic destruction wrought by settlers, and his insistence that the latter owed their ascendency to firearms. His repeated assertion that Aborigines attacked settlers in self-defence and out of a desire for justice was as rare in the period as his recognition of a shared humanity and his ability to transpose feelings across the racial divide. The romantic paradigms gifted to Meston by his Scottish and Anglo-Australian heritage, and expanded by his wide private reading in ancient history, the classics, and such authors as Macpherson, Byron, and Haggard, nevertheless prevented him from mediating anything approaching an authentic knowledge to the public. While it might be argued that these same paradigms permitted him to disseminate a noble, heroic and harmonious version of pre-contact Aboriginal society, with the capacity to soften white racial attitudes, these positives were insulated from any notion of Aboriginal self-determination by his repeated resort to the “doomed race” theory.

Beyond its complex construction of Aboriginality, Meston’s writing for the press comprised many rich cultural layers, including the constitution of the author’s persona, his masculinist assumptions, his promotion of Queensland, the paradox of his natural history and shooting articles, his deployment of sources, and the generic dissemination of his views through rhetoric, poetry and fiction. Deeper penetration of these layers might enhance understanding of the discursive operations of power in Australia during a crucial developmental phase.’

Queensland Review
‘The Mighty Byronian Olympus’: Queensland, the Romantic Sublime and Archibald Meston
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2016

‘Archibald Meston (b. 1851) is remembered as the framer in Queensland of the 1897 Aboriginal Protection Act, legislation which he later helped to implement as Southern Protector. From 1870 until his death in 1924, he published hundreds of articles, stories, poems and letters in Queensland and New South Wales newspapers. While by no means distinguished as literature, this mass of material invites attention not only for its diverse discourses on Indigenous people, but also because it helped to shape the idea of Queensland held by residents and outsiders. The state's history, natural history and geography are Meston's most frequent subjects. This essay seeks to understand further the ideological significance of his journalistic construction of Queensland by examining the connections cultivated in his writings with the poetry of the Romantics, Byron and Shelley, and their American successors, Longfellow and Poe.’